“Oh, be quiet and hand us some rags and the mops,” Jennie said. She stepped forward but slipped. Tommy reached out to catch her but then slipped, too.
In a flash they both landed on the floor in a tangle of arms and legs. Jennie looked at her brother, whose nose ended up only a foot away from hers. That nose glistened in the light, and his hair looked like a wet mop. She knew that she must look the same. She heard a muffled sound and looked at Tommy again. He was laughing. She wanted to be mad at him, but she couldn’t when he laughed like that. So Jennie did the only thing she could do. She laughed, too.
CHAPTER 4
The Secret Weapon
Jennie, Tommy, and Stan spent a long time scrubbing the hallway floor clean of grease. After they finished, Mama insisted that they take their share of a rare batch of cookies to Mrs. Parker as a peace offering. Jennie hated to miss the cookies, but Mrs. Parker’s stern face relaxed a great deal when Jennie handed the lady the plate of cookies.
In the end, the whole mishap was almost worth the trouble, because it made a great story to write to Roger. Jennie included the whole tale in a letter she wrote to their brother, reading it to Tommy before she stuffed the thin sheets into an envelope.
Jennie was worried about Roger. Every day the newspapers carried bad news about the war in Europe, and radio announcers sounded mournful as they reported German U-boat attacks on American ships in the Atlantic Ocean. They hadn’t had a letter from Roger in weeks.
By the end of March, Mama turned pale every time she heard the bicycle bell of the telegram messenger. Her volunteer work at the rations board brought her into contact with too many people who had received the dreaded telegrams announcing that a soldier was injured or missing or, worst of all, killed in action.
The family knew little about Roger’s exact whereabouts, but they knew he was in North Africa with a tank unit. Jennie and Tommy sometimes talked to each other about their big brother and how scared they were for him, but to Mama they gave only smiles and hugs. When Jennie was especially worried, she went down the street to the mission and sat in the back of the little chapel. She prayed for Roger and all the other soldiers. Jennie knew that she could pray anywhere, but the quiet chapel soothed her fears.
Jennie and Tommy were busy with school and war efforts and the endless work at the hotel. Jennie usually had so much work to do that she could push her worries about Roger to the back of her mind.
Pietro wasn’t around the hotel much, although he still lived with Mr. Romano. Everyone else seemed to think Pietro was just a little rude, but Jennie thought it was more than that. She kept an eye on Pietro whenever she could. She didn’t think anyone could be too careful during wartime.
Eventually Pietro changed to the day shift, and Mr. Romano went back to his opera-singing, cheerful self. Having Pietro gone in the daytime seemed to suit Mr. Romano, although he never complained.
April arrived, and with it came spring as well. Mother said that Jennie and Tommy must have spring fever, since they argued and fought with each other so often. Jennie tried to ignore her brother when he was bossy, but sometimes she just had to argue with him.
That arguing landed her on the front stairs of the hotel with a bucket of cleaner and scrub brush one Saturday morning. Mama had banished Jennie to the steps and Tommy to the laundry room to fold towels. The sun was shining outdoors, and the street bustled with activity. Jennie would rather have been playing outside with Colleen, but if she had to work, this wasn’t as bad as doing laundry.
“What’s this? Have we a new scrubwoman here?” Aunt Irene’s voice interrupted Jennie’s vigorous scrubbing.
The Flemings called their neighbor Aunt Irene even though she wasn’t really their aunt. With all their relatives back in Minnesota, it was fun to pretend that the kind woman was truly an aunt. Aunt Irene had moved to the hotel last fall after her son shipped out to the Pacific.
Jennie leaned back and grinned. “I’m in trouble again.”
“Surely not,” Aunt Irene said. “Not you or that lively brother of yours, if I were guessing.”
“It was all Tommy’s fault,” Jennie began.
“Don’t want to hear it.” Aunt Irene held up her hand. “I’m sure there’s plenty of blame to go around. What you two need is a new project, and I’ve had an idea.”
Jennie jumped to her feet, sending the scrub brush tumbling down the steps. Aunt Irene always had great ideas. Sometimes it didn’t seem like she thought like an adult at all. “What is it?”
“First we have to find Tommy,” Aunt Irene said. “Do you know where he is?”
Jennie nodded. “He’s in the laundry, but I’m not supposed to get within ten feet of him.”
Aunt Irene shook her head in mock despair. “Your poor mother has had all she can take, I see.”
“I think so.” Jennie smiled again, but this time it was sheepish.
“You keep scrubbing while I talk to your mother. Maybe we can give her some relief.”
Jennie scrambled to pick up her scrub brush while Aunt Irene went in the hotel entrance. Jennie finished the stairs as fast as possible and toted her bucket back inside. She could see Aunt Irene and Mama in the hotel office near the front door. Both women were laughing, which Jennie took to be a good sign. In a minute Aunt Irene came out, gestured to Jennie to follow, and walked across the lobby and down the hall to the laundry room.
Tommy was stacking clean towels on a shelf when Jennie and Aunt Irene entered. He looked surprised to see them but very glad to be interrupted.
“Tommy, I want you and Jennie to come with me. I have a new project in mind, but I’ll need your help.” Aunt Irene turned and marched back toward the stairs. She seemed to take for granted that Jennie and Tommy would follow. Tommy gave Jennie a questioning look, but she could only shrug her shoulders to show that she didn’t know what Aunt Irene was up to, either. The two hurried to catch up to their neighbor.
Aunt Irene led them down the sidewalk, past the second-hand store and the barbershop, and around the corner by the cigar shop. They trailed behind her until she stopped abruptly in the middle of the next block. “Here we are.” She spread her arms wide.
Jennie looked around in confusion. They stood in front of the vacant lot where some children played. A building had burned there years before and had never been rebuilt. The grass was sparse, but the ground was level and made a pretty good baseball field. Across the street were the butcher shop and a dry goods store.
Tommy spoke first. “What do you mean?” He looked as puzzled as Jennie felt.
Aunt Irene laughed and waved her hand at the lot. “It’s perfect for a Victory garden. In fact, there’s room for a whole lot of Victory gardens.”
Jennie looked at their baseball field and gulped. “A garden? Here?”
“Why, of course,” Aunt Irene replied. “President Roosevelt has asked us to grow as much of our own food as possible. This is our chance to do just that.”
“But we don’t know anything about growing stuff,” Jennie said.
“That’s the beauty of my idea,” Aunt Irene said. “I do know about growing vegetables. I’m from Oklahoma. We raised a lot of our own food when I was growing up.” She walked across the lot, talking as she went. “I was passing by this lot earlier today when I had my inspiration. Then, of course, I thought of you two and what hard workers you are.”
“This field could be divided up into lots of little gardens. People could grow what they wanted in their own garden,” Tommy said.
“Exactly.” Aunt Irene beamed. In a moment she turned and proceeded across the lot again, talking with every step.
“But what about …” Jennie stopped speaking. She wanted to ask about their baseball games. Jennie liked playing baseball—more than some of the boys did. She watched Aunt Irene and Tommy walk on what had been second base. That kind of question might seem downright unpatriotic right now, not to mention a little selfish. Mentally she said good-bye to a summer of baseball games. Besides, this gardening thin
g might be fun.
In a few days the whole neighborhood buzzed about the Victory garden. Jennie and Tommy, together with Colleen and Stan, spread the word. Many people wanted to do as the president asked. Aunt Irene said there was no time to spare now that it was April. Gardens should be planted right away to make the most of growing weather.
The following Saturday the vacant lot teemed with gardeners carrying every sort of digging tool. Dad had made a special trip back to their house on Queen Anne Hill; it was being rented to another family while the Flemings ran the hotel. He had rummaged around in the shed until he found an old shovel and hoe and carried them back.
Jennie and Colleen had decided to share a small plot, while Tommy and Stan did the same nearby. They were all excited until Jennie dug into the dirt with the shovel the first time. It only went in a couple of inches. “Must have hit a hard spot,” Jennie said to Colleen and moved over a few inches to try again. Still the shovel barely bit into the ground. In a few minutes Colleen tried her luck, but every inch of the ground was rock hard.
Jennie heard grunts of effort and murmurs of complaint from every part of the lot. Backs not used to digging were soon aching as the gardeners scraped and scratched away at the dirt.
“How in the world will we ever get this ground dug up enough to plant anything?” Colleen asked.
Jennie didn’t know, so she kept quiet. This gardening was lots harder than Aunt Irene had made it sound.
A commotion in the street attracted everyone’s attention. Jennie saw a battered old pickup truck pull to the side and park. A homemade-looking trailer was hooked to the back of the truck, but it wasn’t the trailer itself that made Jennie look twice. It was the occupants. Two horses stood placidly chewing on wisps of hay, their heads hanging over the high board sides of the trailer. An old gentleman climbed out of the truck and pulled the pegs on the trailer gate.
Jennie’s eyes grew round, and she dropped her shovel so she could run to the street with the others close behind. The man was unloading the horses. Aunt Irene appeared from the other side of the trailer and began giving directions to several men who stood on the sidewalk. They nodded and went to the back of the pickup. Jennie craned her neck but could only see that there was some sort of equipment or machine in the pickup bed. She ran to Aunt Irene.
“What’s going on? What are the horses for?” Jennie asked.
“You’ll see.” Aunt Irene smiled. “We’re about to garden Oklahoma-style.”
In fifteen or twenty minutes the horses were harnessed and backed up to the equipment that looked a little like a big butter knife turned sideways.
“What is it?” Tommy asked. He stood at Jennie’s elbow along with Stan and Colleen.
“It’s a plow,” Colleen said. “I’ve seen my uncle use one on his farm.”
“Oh yeah,” Jennie said, “now I see. I’ve never looked at a real one.”
“Well, I don’t see,” Stan said. “What does it do?”
“It’ll dig up this hard dirt quicker than you can say scat,” Colleen said.
Sure enough, in a few minutes the old gentleman yelled, “Ye-ho!” The horses obediently leaned into the harness, and the plow bit into the ground as they pulled it forward. Behind the plow a furrow of brown earth turned over to the sun for the first time in many years.
A cheer rose from the assembled gardeners as they ran to pick up their tools from the lot. The farmer walked beside his horses, guiding them with long reins that trailed along the ground. Another man gripped the handles of the plow and steered as the horses pulled it back and forth across the former baseball field.
Jennie just shook her head and watched. How in the world had Aunt Irene managed to find a farmer with a plow in the middle of Seattle? It was a couple of hours before she could ask her question. By then the plowing was finished, and Jennie caught up with Aunt Irene as she helped two older women mark off their sections. “You just have to know the right people,” she answered. “The man with the plow is my good friend’s brother. She goes to my church. That’s her, over there.”
A gray-haired woman wearing a huge hat worked nearby. She had her arms around a small boy, helping him chop at a clod of dirt with a hoe. Her face was wreathed with smiles, and Jennie found herself smiling, as well. The April sun was warm on the back of her neck, and a breeze ruffled her hair. The war seemed far away right now.
Jennie and Colleen worked on their small parcel of ground. They hoed and raked until the dirt was smooth. By the middle of the afternoon, they had run out of steam and lay stretched out on the soft bed of earth. Nearby, Tommy and Stan were giving their garden a final raking.
Jennie turned her head a little to sniff the cool dirt. It had a fresh kind of woody smell. The sun was still shining, and she felt like taking a nap right in the middle of the garden.
“Look what I found.” A voice accompanied the shadow that passed over Jennie. She shaded her eyes and saw Trudy waving a piece of paper.
“What?” Jennie asked and reluctantly sat up.
“Come over here and look at this,” Trudy called to Tommy and Stan. The two boys dropped their rakes and walked down the narrow path between gardens.
“What have you got, Trudy?” Tommy called.
“Let’s see.” Jennie snatched at the paper, but Trudy was too quick and yanked the paper and held it high.
“Not so fast,” Trudy said. “Everyone gets to look at it.” She put the paper at their eye level.
It was a flyer. Jennie read aloud, “Victory Garden Competition. Enter now. Cash prizes for the best sweet corn, tomatoes, beets, carrots, and cucumbers. To be judged by a competent jury on August 9. Sponsored by the South Seattle Neighborhood Association.”
“I saw it at the grocery store.” Trudy passed the flyer to Jennie so they could read it again.
In a few moments Jennie looked up from reading. Her eyes shone with pleasure. “We can enter. The entry fee is only twenty-five cents. I have that much.”
“So do I,” Colleen said.
“So do I,” Stan and Tommy said at the same time.
“Let’s all enter,” Stan suggested.
“We can make it boys against the girls,” Jennie announced with a snap of her fingers. “We’ll enter as partners.”
“You two enter your plot, and Stan and I will enter ours,” Tommy said.
“Right.” Jennie looked at Colleen, matching grins spread across their faces.
“Sounds great to me,” Tommy said. “Stan?”
“I’m in,” Stan answered.
“Now wait a minute,” Trudy said. “You’d better watch out. Jennie and Tommy have been in trouble before for trying to outdo each other. Why can’t you enter the best of both gardens? If you actually manage to grow anything, that is.” She gazed pointedly at the bare dirt in front of them, dirt that was a long way from producing prizewinning vegetables.
“It’ll be friendly competition. Right, Tommy?” Jennie grinned.
“Sure, friendly only,” Tommy agreed. “It’ll just add to the fun if we have our own contest.”
“I don’t know.” Trudy frowned and shook her head slowly. “You two never seem to be able to have a friendly competition about anything.”
“You just wait,” Tommy said. “This time will be different.”
“Different,” Jennie echoed. Already her brain was clicking along, thinking how she and Colleen could grow the best vegetables. It should be easy to beat the boys, she reasoned. After all, Colleen said she helped her uncle on the farm. Colleen probably knows all there is to know about gardening. As soon as Trudy walked away, Jennie turned to Tommy.
“We’re going to beat the socks off you,” she said.
“Is that so?” Tommy shook his head. “When did you get to know so much about gardening? I bet we’ll leave you standing in that dirt without a single vegetable to enter in the contest.”
“That’s what you think,” Jennie replied, “but you’ll be wrong. We have a secret weapon, an expert.” She picked up her h
oe and looked at Colleen, who gazed back expectantly.
“And who might that be?” Tommy asked.
“Why, Colleen here, of course,” Jennie said. “She knows tons about gardening. Our cucumbers will be a foot long and our tomatoes almost that wide across.” She glanced at Colleen, who looked astonished. “We’ll definitely win prizes and beat you two,” Jennie ended with a flourish of her hoe.
Meanwhile, Colleen had stepped closer to Jennie. “What are you talking about?” Colleen hissed in Jennie’s ear.
“We’ll just see about that.” Tommy stomped off toward the boys’ garden and Stan followed.
When the boys were safely out of earshot, Colleen shook Jennie’s arm. “I repeat,” Colleen said, “what are you talking about? Me! An expert?”
“You said you helped your uncle on his farm,” Jennie said. “You know, with the plowing.” A mild twinge of concern ran through Jennie. Colleen wasn’t acting like an expert.
“I said I saw a plow on my uncle’s farm.” Colleen ran her hands through her hair. “I was five years old, and my uncle moved to Seattle the next winter. I haven’t been on a farm since.”
“Oh,” Jennie said. “I thought you meant you knew about growing things.”
“Don’t you think I’d have mentioned that before now?” Colleen folded her arms and frowned at Jennie. “After all, we have been getting ready to plant a garden.”
Jennie hesitated. “I guess I thought you just didn’t want to brag. You mean you don’t know about raising tomatoes and carrots and that other stuff?”
“All I know is that I like to eat carrots, and I don’t like cucumbers except as pickles.”
Jennie leaned on her hoe. This was a definite setback. The boys would be looking for their own secret weapon to beat the girls, especially since Jennie had made such a big deal about Colleen. The girls would just have to find another way. Jennie wasn’t about to let Tommy and Stan walk off with any prizes for the best vegetables.
CHAPTER 5
American Triumph: 1939-1945: 4 STORIES IN 1 Page 25